


No Sun and Too Much Rage

by orphan_account



Series: No Sun and Too Much Rage [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Codependency, Dark, Derek hears voices, F/M, Gore, M/M, Possession, Stiles and Scott are a lot like Dean and Sam, Temporary Character Death, Undead Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:46:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Title taken from the song ‘Socio’ by Stone Sour) </p><p>There was an inevitable collective gasp as they spotted the dead boy in the red hoodie. </p><p>What’s dead should stay that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Sun and Too Much Rage

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was done for mwildsides for a Halloween prompt. It is very dark and angsty. You have been warned. This is also set somewhere after the Alpha Pack thing?

“Scott, _move_!”

Stiles is running through the forest towards the boy who has been his best friend for years – or forever, really. His heart is pounding fiercely in his chest so much it hurts. There’s a short distance between him and Scott, but it feels like miles and he pushes his legs as fast as they can go.

When Mom died he promised he’d protect what he had left, and that meant Dad and Scott. It wasn’t easy protecting either of them. Dad was the Sheriff after all, and he had the habit of eating unhealthy crap that got him closer to having a heart attack than not.

Then there was Scott with his werewolf bullshit – which Stiles will always blame himself for; Scott wouldn’t have been bitten if he hadn’t dragged them out in the middle of the night to find a dead body. But no matter what, Stiles would be there for him because Scott was the brother his mom never had the chance to give him.

He can’t let Scott die.

 That’s why when Stiles sees a hunter raise his sword – and _really_ , man, a sword? Are we in medieval times or something? – to run Scott through with, Stiles shoots forward to push Scott out of the way and take the hit for him. After all, as a brother, it was Stiles’ job to keep Scott safe, and if that meant he’d have to give up his life to do it then so be it, right?

“Stiles!” he hears Scott’s horrified cry at the same time the sword sinks through him and pins him to the tree behind him. Allison, whom Scott was too focused on trying to help with her battered leg to hear the hunter, shoots said hunter in the head before trembling at the sight before her.

It’s bad.

It’s _really_ bad.

“It’s not that bad,” Stiles chokes out with a smile. Blood spattered out from his mouth onto Scott’s face.

 Oops. Scott’s going to be even more traumatized when this is all over. Not that Stiles will be around when it was all over.

“Stiles,” Scott’s voice is thick, and oh god no there’s going to be tears, “Stiles, why… _Stiles!”_

He can’t seem to form a sentence, and his hands are trembling where he’s clutching at Stiles’ shoulders. He seems to be avoiding the sword protruding from his stomach and Stiles doesn’t exactly blame him. It’s gross and it hurts like a fucking bitch. It makes Stiles wonder about all that ‘going cold’ shit he’s heard about in all those movies and books, because all Stiles feels is hot, searing pain. He’s practically on fire.

“Scott, go,” a big gob of blood is pouring out of Stiles’ mouth at the ‘g’ of ‘go’, “Promise you’ll keep Dad safe, and _go_.” It’s surprising what one can force out while dying if they have enough urgency to do so.

Scott just makes this loud, half-strangled, howling noise before shaking his head violently and pressing his face in Stiles’ neck. He’s found a way to press his body along Stiles’ while completely keeping away from the sword. Stiles vaguely feels some of his pain leeching from his body, and he knows what Scott is doing, but it won’t be enough.

“No, Stiles, no, no,” becomes his sobbing mantra.

Stiles lets a dopey (bloody) grin stretch over his face even as tears fall out of his eyes.

“Yes,” it’s getting harder to talk but Stiles pushes the words out anyway, “There’re more hunters coming, bro. I love you, tell Dad I’m sorry and take care of him, _please_.  And the pack too.”

“Stiles,” and there’s Allison’s wobbly voice; it makes him feel bad for dying because Allison really didn’t need to see yet another person in her life disappear right in front of her.

Before Stiles could say anything though, another person is rushing to them, and he thanks whatever good is left in the world that it’s Derek and not some other hunter.

Derek let’s in a sharp, wavering breath and then breathes out a hushed, “ _Stiles._ ” And Stiles tries not to laugh at the fact that the last things he’s going to hear is his name repeated by different people in different levels of anguish.

It’s not even his _real name_.

“Hey, Sourwolf,” he tries to joke – his voice is getting quieter and he can’t help it, “take that look off your face and get them out of here for me?”

Derek’s face spasms with emotion; there’s anger, horror, _sadness_. The last one Stiles doesn’t completely get because all he ever did was annoy the guy. Derek’s face settles on some sort of determination and Stiles knows what he’s about to say because… well, he just _does_. Call it a dead man’s intuition?

These death jokes are really funny. He just _kills_ himself with his humor, really.

“It’s too late, Derek,” he smirks because he has to find a way to balance the tears spilling down his cheeks, “Bite won’t save me now. Get Scott off me so he can stop delaying … _this_. Get them out of here.”

This time Derek just swallows, his mouth curving down from where they were pressed in a firm line as his eyebrows bunched together. He makes a nodding motion with his head while reaching out for a sobbing Scott to pull him back, but not before he presses a kiss onto Stiles’ forehead – which didn’t help at all, because Stiles’ heart clenched in his chest and pumped out blood he didn’t really have.

With Scott wrenched away from him, the fire in his veins comes back tenfold, and it got that much harder to stay conscious. Scott’s screams of “No, I’m not leaving without him!” reaches Stiles’ ears in a muted quality, like someone put his head in a vacuum. Suddenly the fire Stiles is feeling pales in comparison to the anger that is rising within him. He wanted nothing more than to stay and fight. To _protect_ the ones he cared about. Instead he gets to die, bleeding out attached to a tree by a sword. It’s not exactly a comfortable death.

The last thing he sees is his friends slowly backing away from him and the oncoming wave of hunters in the middle of a pitch black night. 

The last words on his lips before he loses his consciousness is, “I love you guys, Stay safe. Look out for Dad.”

His last thought is that he’d give anything to stay and rip apart the sonsabitches who are trying to kill his family.

 

~

 

Derek is looking at the corpse of the boy he’d learned to trust first thing in the morning after he’s settled the rest of the pack in a safe place. The corpse is pinned up to a tree like a damn message, the top half of the body slumped over a little bit. A pale hand is limp on the hilt, as if the boy tried to pull the sword out before he died.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Derek reaches for the weapon and wrenches it out quickly. He catches the body before it crumples to the blood stained grass, and holds it close to him for a moment. It’s still warm, and that’s the part that kills Derek the most.

“Stiles, you fucking idiot,” he whispers, “You shouldn’t have been in the middle of this.”

Derek carries the body bridle-style for the simple fact that if Stiles was still alive he would complain with all his might about it.

_This is so emasculating, Derek. Seriously, man. Put me down and drag me by the leg so I can have some of my dignity left. Or so I can at least not feel like a virgin bride being carried over the threshold. Derek, stop it. DEREK!_

Derek can hear Stiles saying something along those lines in his head. He would have said it in that half-annoyed, half-amused tone he began to use around Derek.

Funny how the first person Derek could actually call a friend dies before he could even tell him as much. (Yeah, it’s not funny at all.)

He carries the disturbingly warm and bloodied corpse all the way to his desecrated home and carefully lays Stiles’ body down on the ground. Derek stares at it for a while. It’s creepy, Derek thinks, how still Stiles is right at that moment. Granted, he’s dead, but never in a million years would Derek have thought that Stiles would have ever been still. He almost imagined that the body would fidget, if only a little, just to prove that it was actually Stiles.

Then again, that image is quite disturbing so Derek thanks Stiles mentally for not having a weirdo corpse.

There will be no funeral for Stiles. No wake, no nothing. They won’t tell the Sheriff his son is gone. It would kill him, Scott had said, to find out that he’d lost the only family he had left – his own flesh and blood. They’ll let him think Stiles is just missing. That he ran away or something, anything that would give the Sheriff hope that Stiles was still among the living. It will keep him alive…at least they all hope so. The Sheriff didn’t deserve to lose his son just as much as Stiles didn’t deserve to lose his life.

Stiles will get no funeral, no tombstone, but Derek will give him a burial. He gets on his knees and starts digging with his hands. He didn’t really think he should go into any stores looking for shovels because, _hello, Ex-con. Suspicious much?_

Derek hopes he can get the kid’s voice to stop intoning his thoughts; he’d just gotten his thoughts to stop sounding like Laura.

So Derek digs. And he digs. And he digs some more until finally, he uncovers what’s left of his sister’s remains. He stole her back from when the Sheriff and his deputies brought her to the Medical Examiner’s to get evidence off her body. He wasn’t about to let them bury her somewhere other than where she belonged. He touches her strangely not-decomposed face briefly, before making the hole wide enough to fit a teenage boy in as well.

He’ll bury Stiles right next to Laura because Stiles was pack. He deserved to be buried among the Hales.

 It’s fitting, Derek thinks. They would have liked each other if they ever met. They weren’t the same, not exactly. Laura was calm and graceful, where Stiles was more of an explosion accompanied by flailing limbs. They both knew how to get under his skin, they were both smart and (stupidly) brave, and he trusted both of them – but that was really the extent of their similarities.

Well, no, they had one more similarity.

They were both dead now.

Derek lets out a bitter huff and shakes his head.

 When the hole was big enough Derek picked Stiles up and gently – more gentle than he had ever been when the kid was alive – lowered him into the ground. Derek then slips his hand in his jacket pocket to retrieve the wolfs-bane he’d put there and went to work on creating a spiral with it.

Derek remembered his father telling him that it was tradition to do this for their murdered kin when he was younger. He’d asked why and his father had said,

“It’s so that they can attain retribution. Now eat your peas, son. You won’t ever have to worry about that.”

Derek didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about how wrong his father turned out to be, so he did neither and concentrated on the task in front of him.

When Derek finished, he sat on top of the freshly shifted dirt, staring at the purple flower that marked the grave of the people he cared about.

“You’ll get your retribution, Stiles. I’ll kill them. I swear.”

He felt his throat close up again, and there was a prickle of wetness forming in his eyes, but before he could let himself cry, he got up and walked away. He had a – thankfully alive, but terribly broken – pack to take care of along with hunters to kill.

As he walks away, however, Derek fails to notice the purple petals of the wolfsbane curling in on themselves, wilting, turning into a decayed brown shade.

 

  ~

 

They don’t get time to mourn properly.

Turns out the hunters were teaming up with a group of particularly savage omegas to get rid of the Hale pack. They seem to always know where the pack is going to be, and how to hurt them the most. The Argents – or what’s left of them, really – can’t even seem to help much. Their enemy was too… _gone_. Too savage; thirsty for unnecessary deaths for reasons unknown to Derek. It’s like they can’t catch a fucking break.

 So far, Peter had been brutally murdered; they’d strung him up and burned him alive for the third and last time in his life. Derek would have buried him back at the Hale house if there were anything _left_ to bury. His heart hurts even as he wills it not to – Peter was still his uncle after everything he did, and he never deserved to die like that, let alone three times.

 A few days later Jackson and Erica were captured while they left school (Derek will curse himself forever and a day for letting them go unprotected) and sent back to Derek nearly in pieces as a message. Simple and sweet _– this is the least of what we can do to you. There’s more to come._

The bastards were toying with them at this point. Derek restricted everyone from going to school from then on out, at least until they took care of the threat. No one even tried to fight it; they were all too busy licking their wounds. Stiles would have gotten a kick out of that dog reference, Derek thought.

 Jackson took most of the damage when the two betas were tortured. He kept the attention on himself so that Erica wouldn’t suffer as much, because as much as he likes to play like he doesn’t care, he actually does. It may have taken Derek a bit long to figure out that Jackson had a heart, but when he did, he was so damn proud of Jackson; for protecting the pack when he couldn’t. He doesn’t say it though – he just lets his hands linger a little longer on the kid so as to take his pain away. Jackson seems to get it though, and lets Derek take care of him.

In a way the crisis was sort of good for them all, if only for the reason that the pack is starting to act like an actual _pack_. Derek assumes it’s because they finally got it through their thick skulls that they were in this together, and that they could lose each other at any given moment. Though however good that part was, it was severely being outweighed by all the blood being spilled.

 And if that wasn’t enough, the Sheriff figured out Derek and Scott knew more about Stiles’ “disappearance” than they were letting on.  He kept popping up in places they were to question them when Melissa couldn’t tell him anything – because of course they didn’t tell her about Stiles either, it would have hurt her just as much as it would hurt the Sheriff. Each time Derek could see how it got harder and harder for Scott to not just break down and tell him the truth.

 

~

 

It’s just a couple of weeks after Stiles’ death. There’s a lot of running and screaming and the smell of blood dirt and fear permeates the air.    

The hunters and omegas have found the pack’s latest hideout, which was an abandoned warehouse just on the outskirts of town. It was such an obvious space, Derek knew. But there wasn’t anywhere else they could go without completely running away from Beacon Hills – which they were definitely not going to do. This was their territory, damn it.

Well, it _would_ still be their territory if Derek wasn’t about to fucking die right now.

Can’t he have a nice day, just for once in his life?

A dark voice in the back of his mind tells him, _no, nice days are for people who don’t cause the deaths of their family._  

He ignores it in favor of watching the omega stalking towards him with a sword in her hands. Should Derek survive this, if he never sees a sword again, it will be too soon. He struggled against the binds they had him in – mere ropes entangled with wolfsbane. It hurt Derek’s pride, really, for this being the way he ends – strapped to a chair in a warehouse in the middle of fucking nowhere. He’s glad the others aren’t there at the moment, however. They were safer that way.

“Once the hunters take care of your pack, we’ll be able to kill them and take over your land.” The omega sneers, “Say hello to your family for me, will you?” the Omega taunts, raising the sword to cut Derek in half. He clenches his teeth and stares her down – he’ll leave this life with some sort of dignity.

She swings the sword and, unsurprisingly, there’s blood _everywhere_. A body sliced down would naturally be messy.

But Derek is covered in all this blood and none of his own.  

The Omega in front of him falls into pieces, a smirk frozen on her face as she was so sure she’d be doing the killing at the moment. When the shower of meat tumbles down, Derek is met with a sight he’d never thought he’d see.

Not again, at least.

“I’m gone for a little bit and you were already about to join me?” the voice is familiar yet not. Derek would have had a hard time placing a face to it if he couldn’t see who it was with his own two eyes.

“Stiles?”

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” there’s a pause, and the bloodied boy barks out a dry laugh, “Actually, it’s not really my name. But, whatever.”

 He's in that same damn red hoodie he wore the time Derek had to _bury_ him, the tell-tale slit where he’d been stabbed still present. The boy’s pale skin was stained in crimson; his hands with the angriest shade of red dripping down his fingers. There’s a crazed look in his eyes and a certain sharpness to his grin. And most troubling of all, he smelled like nothing but the blood of the omega he just slaughtered.

There was no heartbeat for Derek to hear.

There was no weapon Stiles could have used to dismember the enemy.

But most importantly, there’s no explanation as to _how the hell Stiles is here_.

When Derek finally gets his mouth to move, that’s what he tries to find out, “How –”

But he was cut off by a pack of frantic teenage wolves and the more than human girls that ran with them. 

“ _Derek_!” That was Jackson, and Isaac followed with an anxious, “Derek, are you okay?”

The fact that they cared about him enough to be that hysterically worried should have warmed Derek, but he was too shocked for any emotion, really.

There was an inevitable collective gasp as they spotted the dead boy in the red hoodie.

Undead boy.

_Stiles._

“Stiles?” Scott was the first to speak, his throat tight and voice hoarse as he croaks out the name.

The cold look in the boy’s eyes softened a little, and he looked more like the Stiles Derek remembered.

“Hey, Bro,” Stiles says with a wry smile. He extends his arms wide open and wiggles his fingers in a jazzy fashion, “Surprise?”

As soon as Stiles speaks, Scott exhales so sharply that he slumps forward before charging to throw his arms around his friend. Stiles doesn’t stumble back at the impact, which is odd considering how hard Scott launched himself at the boy. Instead, he just wraps his arms around Scott and sways a little in a calming motion. Scott is sobbing and Stiles is laughing and Derek should be happy if something wasn’t off about all this.

 _Paranoid much?_ The Stiles-like voice is back in his head and he shuts it up because he has every right to be weary. A thing like this just doesn’t happen. Not without something bad occurring as well. Just look at Peter.

The others have slowly approached the reunited pair, staring numbly and not daring to touch in case this wasn’t really happening. Lydia looked the most stricken; her lips were trembling and her hands were slightly extended toward Stiles. She had poured through countless texts and resources (which Derek had no idea where they came from. He suspects Deaton, but, whatever) to try and find a way to bring Stiles back. She had been able to bring Peter back before, albeit against her will, so why should she not do it for someone she actually gave a shit about? It became an unhealthy obsession she was possessed with and it was extremely dangerous, so Derek put a stop to that at once.

 _What’s dead should stay that way,_ he had said.

They had fought hard forth and back, and in the end she had refused to speak to him for a long while.

But that didn’t matter so much now that Stiles was here. Derek fleetingly hoped she hadn’t done anything behind his back to be the cause of this, but then tossed that thought out the window. She wouldn’t have betrayed his trust like that, he’s sure. Derek just focuses closely at the scene before him.

Scott drew back from the hug only to grab Stiles’ face and paw at the rest of the other boy’s body – mostly his stomach where the wound should have been. He’s repeating the boy’s name under his breath and his eyes are wider than Derek has ever seen them be before.

“How?” Scott finally asks what everyone’s wondering, “I saw you – you were, just. And then we left you. But, you’re _here_.”

He’s babbling, clearly dumbstruck, but no one blames him. Stiles just stares, his mouth pressed in a thin line, as his friend gets everything out. Boyd brakes out of the don’t-touch-Stiles spell the pack has been under and presses his palm against Stiles’ neck. Stiles’ eyes flitted to Boyd as he curled his hand to grip the back of Stiles’ neck, his thumb stroking up to his jaw and down to the collarbone.

Stiles doesn’t quite remember Boyd being that touchy, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Isaac goes for his wrist and does the same stroking motion as Boyd – thumb resting at the lateral of Stiles’ wrist before resorting to brushing his thumb in a circular motion on Stiles’ skin.

“You don’t have a pulse,” Boyd murmurs, and behind him Erica whimpers as Boyd continues, “Your heart’s not beating.”

Isaac gulps, “Your skin is burning hot, though.”

Allison and Lydia dart out to touch Stiles too, to see if the statements were true. They gasp when Lydia finds no pulse and Allison jerks her hand back from the heat rolling off of Stiles’ skin. Still, Stiles stays eerily silent through it all, eyes distant and jaw clenched.

“Why?” Jackson looks pale and justifiably freaked out, “What the hell does that mean?”

“How are you alive?” Erica and Scott whisper almost in unison.

Stiles blinks, and there’s a quirk of his lips as he lifts a shoulder in a shrug, “Hell if I know.”

His voice is strained – but just barely. Derek feels his hair stand up.

“You’re lying,” he grits out, he may not be able to listen for a stuttering heartbeat, but he can still see it. He _knows_ Stiles. He knows how he lies, and Stiles could never really lie to him – he never really tried, actually. Never to Derek. The fact that he’s trying now is unsettling to say the least.

Stiles turns to face Derek with a raised eyebrow that completely reminds Derek of his uncle. A shiver runs down his spine. Then Stiles smiles, a wry little smile, and there’s something off about it that has Derek thinking _wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong._

“Looks like that wolfsbane is making you a little crazy there, dude,” Stiles scoffs, “let’s not waste any more time and get you out of those, yeah?”

With that, the boy walks behind the alpha and rips away the ropes with his bare hands as if they’re nothing but paper. Derek sees his pack become marginally tense, and Allison narrows her eyes at Stiles. Derek is out of the chair as soon as he’s free, side-eyeing Stiles while he rubs his wrists and rolls his shoulders.

“How’d you do that?” Allison probes calmly.

Stiles lifts a shoulder instead of answering, “Where are the other homicidal sacks of shit? I know that she,” he waves his hand in the general area of the pile of meat that used to be the omega, “wasn’t the only one. It’s time we start hitting back.”

Scott blanches, “We just got you back, Stiles. We can’t just go out to fight when you just came back.”

Derek sees Stiles’ mouth spread into a small, sad smile. He thinks Stiles mutters a, _not sure if it’s a good thing or not._ But no one else seems to hear it, so he’s pretty sure it was all in his head.

“We can. We have to, Scott,” Stiles says, weary.

Erica, who now took to hugging Stiles starts mumbling into his shirt, “They’re too strong, Stiles. They know what they’re doing.”

Boyd moves forward to rub Erica’s back in a soothing gesture. He knows she has to be thinking of the time they took her. It makes his blood boil that she’s been through such trauma twice already. Erica shifts so that she’s hugging both Stiles and Boyd, then.

“Besides,” Isaac continues, “They took over the abandoned train station we used to go to. And Peter got killed when he tried to get something from the Hale House. We think they’re patrolling that area.” 

Stiles holds Erica gently as he contemplates, “Well, we know the places they’ve been haunting like the back of our hand. We have the home field advantage. And the omega just said that whoever she’s with plans to betray the hunters anyway, so all we have to do is turn them against each other. And then kill them, simple as that.”

The cold confidence in Stiles’ voice bothered Derek to no end.

“Why the hell are you so eager to go back out there and get killed, huh Stiles?” he grimaces.

“I bet you didn’t even _try_ to fight back,” Stiles spits.

That was uncalled for, “We did and you know it!” Derek yells.

“Really guys?” Erica looks between them uncomfortably, “Are we really going to start fighting now?”

Stiles ignores her, “Damn it Derek, they’re not going to stop if we wait around with our thumbs up our asses!”

“Since when do you call the shots, kid?” Derek sneers.

“Well _someone_ has to take action,” Stiles jeers, “you certainly aren’t.”

That’s fucking _it_. Derek lunges forward to grab Stiles by the collar and jerk him up, dislodging Erica from Stiles in the process. Newly undead or not, he had no right. Derek was the alpha, not him. His fists are hard against the boy’s clavicle and he shakes him just once. Stiles doesn’t look the least bit intimidated.

“You little shit,” Derek spits, “Who the hell do you think you are? You know _nothing_. If we go out there unprepared we’ll just end up _dead_.”

“I think,” Stiles speaks, his tone is so eerily calm but his eyes sharp and threatening, “that if we don’t do something now we’ll end up dead anyway. We’ll never be truly prepared, Derek. They won’t give us that luxury.” 

And as irritating as it is, Stiles is right. If they don’t act, they would have to run and then they’ll _always be running_. It still doesn’t mean Derek is happy about it.

“And I think,” Stiles grits his teeth this time, “that I have every right to go after those assholes. Don’t you think I deserve revenge? Don’t you think _Peter_ deserves some justice? They burned him down and they’ll do it again to each and every one of us.”

Derek abruptly lets go of the boy and steps back, “How did you know what they did to Peter?”

Stiles bares his teeth in annoyance, “You know what? Fuck this noise. I’ll go after them myself.”

Derek looks at the kid with shocked eyes as he picks up the discarded sword on the floor. The boy is definitely not the same anymore. He’s cold. _Bloodthirsty_.

He’s fast too.

Derek has to run to catch up to Stiles before he can grab him.

“What,” Stiles snaps, tugging his arm back from Derek’s grip.

Derek doesn’t let go, though.

“We are not losing you again,” he says, because as off and irritating Stiles is being right now, he’s still Stiles. He’s still pack.

And Stiles is right, they need to do _something_.

“We’re in this together,” Derek gives Stiles’ arm a squeeze, “We need to form a strategy, though. Do you have any plans in mind?”

Stiles relaxes, the anger that made him rigid ebbing away. There’s mischief of a malignant kind in Stiles’ eyes. The grin that spreads across the boy’s face is manic at best.

“Oh, do I _ever_.”

Adrenaline is eating away the exhaustion of the pack, and each of them has grown a little crazed smile of their own.

Derek can’t help but smirk. What ever happened to Stiles, means bad news for their enemies. He’s glad the kid is on their side.  

 

~

 

The plan worked out smoothly.

It was a first, considering their tendencies for having their plans all fall to shit.

Stiles had sauntered right in the middle of the hunter’s and omega’s base, spooking them to high hell. The dead boy had distracted them enough for the pack to surround the base. Each word slithering out of Stiles’ mouth worked to pitch the omegas against the hunters, and when the inevitable fight broke out, the pack moved in.

Derek thinks he’ll never get the screaming out of his head. Or the blood. There was a pool of it by the time they were finished, and by “they,” he meant _Stiles_.

 The boy was a living embodiment of red as he dug into each and every one of his enemies. Ruthless like Derek never remembered him being just two weeks prior. Showing brute strength that Derek _knew_ Stiles didn’t have.

Shouldn’t have.

But apparently he did.

At one point the boy had cleaved into an omega’s chest to rip out his heart, grinning as it still pulsated in his hand. The pack could practically feel the bloodlust coming off of Stiles in waves and steered clear of him throughout the battle, with the exception of Scott. Scott, Derek muses, is too overjoyed to have Stiles back to notice he’s broken.

It’s not that Scott was stupid, no, that wasn’t it at all. The kid was pretty smart – he had a good head on his shoulders even though he was prone to making some mistakes. ( _Who the hell wasn’t, these days?_ ) But he was too easily blinded by his love sometimes, and there was no doubt that Scott loved Stiles. They were brothers, if not in blood then in soul. In a way it makes Derek a bit envious, because that is exactly the type of bond that _he_ was supposed to have with Scott. He knows Scott would never choose him over Stiles in a million years; he could never fill Stiles’ shoes. Actually, no one probably could fit in Stiles’ shoes when it came to his role in Scott’s life. Maybe Isaac, but Stiles kept Scott human. _Normal._

If only there was someone who could do the same for Stiles right now.

With that thought, a scent flows into Derek’s nostrils. He turns and greets,

“Jackson, what are you doing here? You should be home, _resting_.”

It was the first order the alpha gave after each and every one of their enemies were dealt with. Everyone had looked dead on their feet except, ironically, for Stiles. They had all dispersed in groups – Isaac, Erica, and Boyd going one way, Jackson and Lydia going in another, Allison with Scott dragging Stiles the other way, leaving the alpha to return to the warehouse where their things currently were.

 “That place isn’t really my home,” Jackson shrugs, “the pack is.”

And Derek must be doing something with his face because Jackson scrunches his nose and says, “Ugh, don’t look at me like that. I’m tired, okay?”

Derek smirks, because _of course_ Jackson would blame his sentimentality on exhaustion. Derek says nothing, instead opts for patting Jackson’s back and steering him towards a chair that, just 18 hours prior, Derek had been tortured on.

_No evidence left on his body, though, thanks to his were-wolfy healing abilities._

(God damn it, Derek is going to maim Stiles for filling his mind with his stupid vocabulary.)

“What’s on your mind, Jackson?” Derek questions, because from the way Jackson is clenching and unclenching his jaw, something is obviously bothering him.

“There’s something wrong with Stilinski.”

Derek forces himself not to roll his eyes at the understatement of the day. Instead, he schools his face into a mask of inexpression. There’s no need for his pack to start worrying about something else just yet. They need a break before they end up killing themselves from the emotional trauma that’s been piling up. Derek will handle this so that none of them have to; so he goes to tell Jackson that he’s wrong and that there is nothing to worry about.

 _Because that always works out well_ , he can hear Stiles scoff.

Jackson, however, doesn’t give him a chance to spew those lies.

“Don’t even fucking try to tell me otherwise, Derek,” he hisses, but then tones down the aggressiveness in his tone when Derek raises an eyebrow in warning. Jackson takes a deep breath and continues,

“I _know_ something is wrong with him. There’s something in his eyes, man,” Jackson is shaking his head unconsciously, eyes wide and glued to the floor as he says this, “He was vicious out there. I think I saw him bite one of the hunters too.”

Derek swallows. That would explain all the blood he’d seen on the kid’s mouth that night.

“It’s like he wasn’t Stiles. I mean, obviously he _was,_ but there were times…it was like…” _how I was when I was being controlled as the Kanima_ he doesn’t say, but Derek gets the drift.

 Derek brings another chair he found on the side of the warehouse and slides it so that he could sit facing Jackson. He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, hands folded under his chin. When he couldn’t find anything to relay back to Jackson he says,

“I thought you didn’t like Stiles, let alone actually care about him.”

It must have been the wrong thing to say because Jackson glares _daggers_ at him like he never has before.

“Stiles is a little annoying shit sometimes. We never got along. I was a bastard to him and he was a bastard to me. Did you know he didn’t really have any qualms with killing me when he thought I was evil?”

Derek blinks. Nothing Jackson is saying is refuting his statement. When he opens his mouth to say as much, Jackson cuts him off again (as alpha he should really put a stop to that habit, but whatever),

“That’s the thing though. Stilinski always protects the ones he cares about. He sacrificed himself for Scott, for crying out loud,” Jackson snorts at that, but not in a derogatory way – just as if he couldn’t believe it, “He’s always looking out for people, but we let him die.”

Derek shakes his head, “It was his choice, Jackson. It wasn’t our fault.”

Jackson scoffs, “Like you believe it wasn’t your fault,” and then he looks up, eyes serious, “Whatever’s wrong with him, we have to fix him.”

Derek lets out a breath softly, nodding as he asks, “Why didn’t you tell Scott all this?”

Jackson actually winces and Derek understands because, yeah, _bad idea_.

“Those two are too freakin’ codependent. McCall would beat the hell out of me if I even suggested that there was something wrong with Stilinski.”

“And especially so if it came down to us having to kill him,” Derek adds.

Jackson inhales sharply, “You think…”

“It’s always a possibility.”

“Yeah, well let’s hope not. It’s our turn to help Stiles.” Jackson swallows.

And that right there, it makes Derek smile – even though he turns away to hide it. Because it turns out the first wolf he made wasn’t a failure after all. Jackson was learning fast what it meant to be pack.

They sat there in silence for a while, lost in their thoughts. It was comfortable until they both felt something in the air. There was an uncomfortable pressure pressing down upon them, and not the figurative kind either. Their breathing started to become a bit labored, and Derek felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. The air had gotten colder. The alpha and his beta looked to each other, confused, until a loud crash made them nearly jump out of their skin. Jackson was up and snarling in the direction of the crash, as Derek had his own claws out – ready for battle.

What they found, however, was that a part of a wall had crumbled down and smashed into pieces on the floor. There was nothing else.

They calmed enough to school their features to be fully human, but they were still weary of their surroundings.

The ominous feeling was still in the air as Jackson spoke, “Those bastards did a number on this place didn’t they?” Jackson was quick to place the blame on their deceased enemies, “You should ditch this place. No one needs anything else from here. You should find someplace better for us to come to, anyway.”

Derek raises an eyebrow, “And you should stop telling me what to do.”

Jackson makes a face, “Whatever, I’m leaving. Stilinski should be at his house already.”

With that, Jackson is gone and Derek sets out to the Stilinski residence.

He has to talk to Stiles before anything. He needs to make sure this is taken care of.

 

~

 

When Derek arrives at the house, the first thing he notices is the lack of Stilinskis inhabiting the place. He leaps up into Stiles’ room – left open from when he was last there, which was the night after Peter’s death.

He was there the night after Stiles’ death too. He’d lied on the boy’s bed for what seemed like hours, breathing in his lingering scent, mourning. 

Because of course he’d mourn for Stiles. It was _Stiles_.

He was never interrupted, as the Sheriff never seemed to come home after Stiles’ “disappearance”. Derek doesn’t blame him – no one wanted to come back to a home that was once filled with family and realize they had nothing left. So as the Sheriff stayed at the department, or at the McCall’s residence, Derek had time to take in the remainder of Stiles. 

He found that the scent of the boy – skin and soap, a bit of sweat, cotton from all his hoodies, and leather from the Jeep’s seats, a hint of medication along with an even smaller hint of whiskey all with an undertone of wolfsbane – had comforted him. As to why, Derek had realized that it was because he wasn’t left with the smell of his family when they died. All he had left in the Hale House was the smell of ash and not even the faintest trace of his mother, or his little sister Olivia. Not even Laura or Peter, who had visited the house after the fire.

Laura didn’t leave him her scent either – just the one on her corpse that was too much death and not enough of his sister.

Even Peter never smelled the same after he went insane. He just smelled like blood, and anger and fire and sadness. Nothing at all like the prankster, fun-loving and _jovial_ uncle he used to be.

But here in this room, Stiles had left his scent from when he was still alive. It was like he was still there. Derek remembers being stretched out on the bed, his face pressed into Stiles’ pillow as he inhaled Stiles’ drool and he thought, maybe, if he squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated enough, he could hear the boy’s sleep ramblings.

Sometimes, though, if he concentrated hard enough, he could catch a whiff of the boy’s leftover arousal. The tiniest drop of semen on the sheets that Stiles never got the chance to clean. Derek wasn’t surprised it was there – Stiles had been a teenager after all – and if Derek found himself rutting against the sheets in response to it, he’d just snoop around the boy’s room afterwards to assuage any guilt he felt.

In his snooping, he had found some videos on Stiles’ laptop. Mostly of him and Scott. One of him and his father, and a few by himself. Derek had decided not to watch them just yet. He wasn’t ready. Instead he took to looking at pictures – pictures stuck in the boy’s pillowcase, pictures in albums, pictures on the boy’s wall, pictures in their proper frames…

Derek snapped out of his thoughts and noticed there was something amiss. He knew that there were four pictures Stiles had framed around his room. There was one of a younger version of him and Scott, hanging next to a childish drawing on the wall, one of his parents and him, and another of just his parents, sitting atop of his shelf. The last was one of Stiles’ mother – belly swollen with what Derek would have assumed to be Stiles, if the boy (who was truly a boy in this picture) hadn’t been in it as well. But it wasn’t in its usual place next to Stiles’ laptop.

No, it was on the floor – glass shards spewed everywhere, some of them bloody. Derek knelt down to smell on of the shards holding the liquid crimson, and quickly discerned that it belonged to Stiles. Derek swallowed as he felt another wave of unease hit him. He quickly cleaned up the mess and gently placed the picture in its rightful place.

He had to find Stiles, _now_.

 

~

 

He had swung into Scott’s room through his open window.

 _Werewolves have a tendency to ignore normal entrances, like say, doors and things,_ and Derek really wishes he could find Stiles so that he could hear his _real_ voice. 

“Hey Derek,” Scott greets, “You need something?”

The alpha presses his mouth in a thin line. The kid appeared spooked, and his tone was subdued. He was staring at a rather neat looking sleeping bag. Derek rests a hand where Scott’s neck and shoulder meet.

“Where’s Stiles?” he asks softly.

“He’s…he said he was going back home for a little bit,” Scott replies.

Derek frowns, “I was just there. No Stiles.”

He can feel Scott tense and the boy snaps his head up to look at Derek, “He wasn’t? Where is he?”

Derek gives a slight squeeze to Scott’s shoulder to calm the boy down.

“I came here to ask you that. Don’t worry, I’ll find him.”

“I’ll help,” and Derek pushes him down to keep him from moving.

“No, rest. I’ll find him. We need to talk, anyway.”

Scott narrows his eyes, and _oh, here we go_.

“Why do you want to talk to Stiles?”

Derek grits his teeth. He doesn’t have time for this.

“You can’t tell me you don’t sense something wrong with him. You’re not stupid, Scott.”

The boy snorts, “Except you tell me that I am almost all the time.”

“We need to know how he came back, Scott.”

“ _Why,_ ” Scott asks, and his voice is so full of emotion that Derek has to step back, “Why can’t we just let it go. Not look a gift horse in the mouth – that’s the saying right? I just… I just got him back, Derek.” Scott’s hands are trembling slightly – Derek wouldn’t have caught it if it weren’t for his senses. The boys voice was getting thicker, and it was all Derek could do to not get teary eyed. Frustrating or not, Scott was still a brother.

“Scott…”

The boy sighs, and he sounds so, so old. He looks back over to the sleeping bag.

“He…I don’t think he slept at all, Derek. Even though he said he was tired,” Scott pursed his lips together before continuing, “He kept sharpening these knives… I don’t know where they came from.”

Derek nodded as if he knew what the hell to do with that information and started backing away towards the window, “I’ll find him. Go back to resting, you need it,” he said.

  “I don’t want to lose him again, Derek” Scott whispers.

“I get it, Scott. Neither do I.”

But then Scott turns to face the alpha, his face cold and his eyes flashing gold, “No. You don’t get it. I _won’t_ lose him again, _Derek_.”

 Derek nods before huffing and leaping out the window.

He got the threat loud and clear. If he hurt Stiles, Scott will deal as much damage as he can. (And Derek knew Scott could cause a hell of a lot of damage if he wanted to.)

Not that Derek intended to hurt Stiles in any way, but the threat still loomed over him, just in case.

 

~

 

Derek checks back at the now cleaned up abandoned station, only for Erica, Boyd and Isaac to tell him he never showed up there. He’d gone to the Sheriff’s department next, but only the elder Stilinski was present, losing himself in case files and caffeine. He went to Lydia’s place and even sniffed around the Argent’s, but Stiles was nowhere to be found.

Derek decided to give up for the moment, rest for a little bit because he needed it and so he headed back to his burnt down family home. There was a mattress he kept there to sleep on sometimes. He didn’t particularly want to go back to the warehouse or subway car.

When he arrives at the front, however, his whole body freezes at the sight before him.

He’s found Stiles, sitting right where Derek buried him two weeks ago, gently stroking the face of his sister’s corpse.

Derek feel’s his heart stutter and hears the blood rushing in his ears. The teeth of the alpha start to ache, as he doesn’t know whether to rip the boy away from his sister, or run up and lie down with his two favorite corpses.

The fact that he even has favorite corpses should alarm him more than it does, but he doesn’t have time to contemplate that.

“Hey, Derek,” Stiles says softly, not looking up from Laura’s face.

He can see that the boy had shut Laura’s eyes and closed her open mouth; she would have looked peacefully asleep if it weren’t for the bottom half of her body being missing.

“Scott said you told him that you were going home,” Derek says in place of a greeting.

Stiles stops his caresses and sports a little self-depreciating smile on his face. He reclines himself parallel to Laura’s body, his forehead pressed to hers before saying,

“Well, a dead person’s home is where he’s buried, right?”

Derek takes in a haggard breath and strolls over to them. He stares down, taking in Stiles’ closed eyes and pale skin. His heart is still silent – all he can hear coming from the boy is the sound of his lungs expanding and deflating as air goes in and out of his nostrils. He sits with his legs crossed on the other side of Laura and leans over slightly – almost unconsciously curling over the two bodies.

“You’re not exactly dead, Stiles.”

“Undead. Whatever. You’re cutting into my angsting time, dude,” Stiles rolls his eyes as he jokes.

There’s a brief silence before Derek breaks it.

“We need to talk.”

Stiles opens his eyes wide and throws a hand over his heart in mock horror, “Are you breaking up with me?”

Derek scowls and swats at Stiles’ head, “Stop that.”

“Stop what? I thought we had something special,” and there’s a sniff or two added in there for dramatic effect.

“You’re deflecting.”

“No, I’m _reflecting_ on our past together. Did those stakeouts in the Jeep mean _nothing_ to you?”

“Stiles, I swear to God.”

The kid breaks out in a grin void of any scorn, and the laugh he lets out is genuine. Derek doesn’t even bother to hide his – albeit small – smile. He had missed their banter. His smile is fleeting, however, when he takes a gander at Stiles’ hands. The kid’s knuckles were a slight shade of purple, and some of the skin was broken in spots.

“What happened there? And don’t lie to me, Stiles.” Derek asks, brushing his fingers over the bruised section. He marvels when they disappear under his touch. That’s never happened before.

Stiles blinks and brings up the back of his hand to his face.

“I punched a wall,” he answers softly.

With Stiles’ hand positioned this way, Derek can see a gash running across his palm. The alpha takes the boy’s hand in his and runs a finger over the cut, watching as it closed under the trail of his finger. Derek thinks he knows the answer before he asks.

“And here?”

Stiles swallows, “Got cut by some glass.”

 

Their hands intertwine then, and they stay that way. The alpha openly stares down at the boy, and the boy stares at the darkening skies in turn.

“How did you come back Stiles?” the _what the hell are you_ gets left unsaid, but Stiles hears it anyway. He’s fluent in Derek-speak, you know.

When Stiles doesn’t answer right away Derek starts to growl in frustration. Stiles merely raised an eyebrow and squeezed his hand, a promise that he’d talk but he needed to gather all the thoughts that were running amok in his head. Derek settles down, then. He lays his free hand on top of Laura’s head and swallows down his grief so that he can focus on whatever Stiles would say when he began to speak.

What a disturbing picture they must make.

_A werewolf, an undead boy, and half of the werewolf’s sister go to a bar…_

Okay, Derek can’t really blame that one on Stiles’ voice, but he does anyway.

Christ, he’s going nuts.

He must have a crazy expression on his face because Stiles is giving him a weird look, slightly widened eyes darting around Derek’s face with an even slighter crease in between his brows. Derek scrunches his nose because Stiles can fuck off. The kid has more loose screws in his head than Derek does.

A moment longer passed and Derek started to get used to the silence. He’s taken to rubbing the skin of Stiles’ strangely heated hands with his thumb. When Stiles turns back to pressing his forehead to Laura, Derek startles.

“I met her,” Stiles whispers.

Derek’s thumb stops its ministrations. He knows Laura’s never met Stiles for sure when she was still alive. Which means…

“Hell didn’t want me. And I guess if you run with wolves long enough you’re not considered human anymore,” Stiles continues, “So I was put into purgatory.”

Derek doesn’t know what to say to that. His older brother Mason had told him about purgatory before, when he was seven and one of their aunts died. Derek had asked him if she would be alright in heaven, and Mason had said that people like them didn’t go to heaven.

“That’s only for humans and angels, Derek. Us? We go to purgatory with all the other non-humans,” he had said.

Derek was sure Stiles didn’t belong in that place. He was human – at least, when he died. Now he’s not so sure.

Stiles sees his confusion and takes it as a signal to continue.

“Peter told me it was because I was willing to give up everything for you guys. Even my humanity,” and at Derek’s frown Stiles clarifies, “Peter was down there too. Found us after about a month or so after I’d bumped into Laura. Time is longer down there than it is up here, Derek, don’t give me that look. Anyway, Peter explained what was happening up here with you guys. That’s why I knew how he died. I didn’t see any one else of your family, I’m sorry, but we did look. Laura said she was looking for a while, though, and to no avail.

We had each other though. Peter was more…well, nice? He stopped looking like he was scheming at least. He was still as sassy and sarcastic as ever. I guess death didn’t change that. And he and Laura got along well despite everything that happened. Better than you and he ever did.”

Derek stays silent like he tends to be. He’s latching onto each and every one of Stiles’ words. Letting them sink into him. It was a lot to take in. Derek was happy that Stiles wasn’t trying to lie to him anymore, at least.

A small, warm smile stretches on the boy’s face when he continued, “Laura was…awesome. She kind of kidnapped me when she smelled you on me. Not that I minded. It’s crazy down there. Almost like the wars up here but more… _pure_ , I guess. I can’t really describe it to you. All I can say was that I definitely needed someone to have my back and she did that for me. And when Peter came so did he. We had each other’s backs.

She had the alpha status down there, still. I don’t really understand why. Peter explained it but I was too tired to listen to the full explanation. He freakin’ loved to hear himself talk, you know. But, uh, purgatory isn’t any place for a human like me, so Laura gave me the bite. Taught me how to fight and control myself and stuff. I…I miss her. I miss Peter too.”

Derek feels spikes of envy fester inside of him. Envy that this boy got to spend time with Laura. Envy that Laura got to take care of Stiles like he never could. Envy that Peter had taken a part of that as well. Envy that Stiles accepted the bite from his sister and never from him.

_It’s not right to be jealous of dead people, Sourwolf._

Derek sulks, but then his envy turns into sorrow.

His heart aches because he missed her too. He knows how Stiles is feeling, sees it in the way Stiles is curled around Laura’s body now.

“She kind of reminded me of you. Except she had Peter’s sass factor and she was even scarier than you are, at times.”

Derek huffed, because that sounded just about right. Laura had been…volatile on certain days. She was calm, spirited, but definitely not someone to be fucked with. That was why she was always meant to be the Alpha. Derek knew he was a joke compared to his sister.

Another silence passed between them. Stiles had then moved to sit up – mirroring Derek’s crossed-legged posture on the ground, leaning over Laura, but not touching her anymore.

“I met someone else down there,” Stiles said, tone subdued, “He offered me a deal. He said he sensed an opening for me to come back here, to get revenge. The spiral with the wolfsbane had allowed for it, he said.”

Derek inhaled sharply. There was truth in what his father told him that one time, after all. He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not just yet.

“The fact that I was originally human when I went there helped too. My body was still human so it made it easier for us to travel back here, I guess. I still found it difficult…” Stiles bit his lips, “He’d just wanted to ride back along with me. Help me get revenge. He was killed by hunters too; he obviously still felt bitter about it. Laura didn’t want me to do it. She ranted and raved about how much of an idiot I was.”

“You _are_ an idiot,” Derek interrupts for the first time, just because he feels like he has to.

The look Stiles gives him is one that said he didn’t exactly disagree.

“Peter said I should though.”

Stiles remembered it all clearly.

 _Avenge me – avenge_ us _and protect the pack._ Peter had said. _You need to. They don’t need to end up here so soon._

Laura had glared daggers at the older man. But it hadn’t been her choice to make. Peter was right. Stiles had needed to do it – to get back and fight alongside his pack again, especially since he’s gotten stronger. If she wanted to, she could have stopped him anyway – being the alpha and all. Stiles figured she let him go because in the end, all she wanted was for her baby brother to be safe.

“So I did,” Stiles said, “I’m not a werewolf anymore. At least I don’t think so. Maybe, because I’m sure it’s why the stab wound healed. But I think the effects of the bite disappeared after I healed.”

Derek looks at him wearily. If that was true, it didn’t explain why exactly Stiles didn’t have a scent. Or why his heart didn’t beat. Or how he was able to handle their enemies the way he did.

“I don’t think I’m human either,” Stiles continues and adds with a huff, “An abomination more like it.”

Derek untangles his fingers from Stiles’ to rest them on the back of the boy’s neck.

“Is that thing still…riding you?”

The boy tenses under Derek’s hand, his eyes turning into cynical slits.

“No. It’s just me.”

Derek breathes in and chooses to ignore the reaction for now. He’s got his answer.

“Why haven’t you gone back to your father?”

He almost regrets asking the question from the way the boy’s face crumbles.

“He’s better off thinking I’m dead.”

Derek recoils, “He’d be better off having his son back; you’re an idiot for thinking otherwise.”

“Why?” Stiles shrugs, “He’d get over it eventually. If he could deal with losing mom, he could definitely get over me. Besides, he has Scott. He’s always looked at Scott like a second son. He probably likes Scott better than me anyway. All I do is cause trouble for him, Derek. It’s for the best.”

“He needs you, Stiles!” Derek is getting angry, because the kid has the chance to be reunited with the father he loves so much and he isn’t fucking taking it, “He’ll be better with you around.”

Stiles’ eyes flash, “And if it turns out that there’s something wrong with me? And I try to kill him?”

“What–”

“Don’t play dumb, dude. That’s why you came to look for me, right?” Stiles sneers, “To see if I needed to be dealt with, right?”

Stiles stands up and stalks towards the desecrated house, an “ _I should’ve listened to Laura_ ” passing his lips as he did so. 

Derek rushes to follow the boy inside,

“Stiles! Listen–”

But the boy is gone, nothing but cold air greets the alpha.

He fights off the shudder threatening to take over his body.

 

~

 

Over the next few days things are quiet.

Derek checks over his pack, who have caught up on their rest and are slowly easing their way back to school and the work that awaited them there.

Stiles doesn’t go back to school.

The few times Derek has been able to catch up with the boy had been in places around the forest surrounding the Hale House and Laura’s grave. Each time the boy quickly disappeared before they could get any sort of conversation in, much to Derek’s chagrin.

The boy was acting like a spooked animal for fuck’s sake.

Next time he saw Stiles he’s going to press the boy down to the forest floor, teeth at his throat.

Or at least, that’s what he originally had in mind.

The next time he saw Stiles, it was bloody.

It wasn’t a human, thank goodness. Only a stag.

Which Stiles was crouching over, idly carving spirals into its carcass with the knives Scott must have been talking about. His eyes were glued to his work, not noticing Derek get right behind him.

“Stiles.”

The boy whirls around – the flail that should have accompanied the movement missing – knife in hand, ready to slice Derek. Which Derek expected, so he was able to grab the boy’s wrist before he did any damage.

“Oh. Hey, Derek,” there’s a big grin there, as if he hadn’t been doing anything disturbing just now, “Fido want some deer?”

Derek’s hackles rose at the dog joke, _you’re not fucking funny_ , he tries to say, but Stiles takes that moment to surge forward and shove his tongue down his throat. Derek is stunned enough that he stops moving. When he finally jumps out of it and goes to push back (either with his hands or with his tongue, Derek’s not even sure) Stiles has already darted out of Derek’s hold and disappeared beyond the tree line.

The asshole distracted him so that he could make an escape.

And it happened twice more after that, until the third time, where Derek grabs Stiles by the throat slams him down to the floor.

“Yeesh. Someone likes it rough,” Stiles wheezes out as he struggles to get the alpha off of him.

It’s of no use though, not when Derek pin’s his wrists above his head and presses the rest of his body on the boy to keep him from moving.

“Stop running away,” Derek snarls.

“I thought wolves liked a chase,” Stiles quipped, rolling his hips up to grind against the older man.

 It was like a trigger had been pulled for Derek to tear the boy into pieces.

In the good way, that is.

His grin is feral, as he moves in to attack the boy’s mouth. He bites at his lips, licks the blood off, kisses him, grinds into him, squeezes him, _teases_ him. It’s a tornado of lust; quick and hard and devastating.

It’s over with a little too quickly, and they are panting, covered in cuts and scratches and bite marks – some already fading from Derek, but a lot of them settling for a long stay upon Stiles’ body. Ignoring the mess they’ve made between them, Derek drops his head in the crook of Stiles’ neck.

“I don’t get why you stay here by yourself,” he says into Stiles’ skin, “The rest of the pack is worried for you.”

“I don’t belong with the living,” Stiles replies softly.

Derek wraps himself tightly over Stiles at that.

“You belong with us,” he grits out, “At least to watch over… to protect them, like you fought hard to get here so you could do.”

Stiles lets in a shaky breath, as if he’s scared by the thought. Derek wonders why he’s so afraid but then Stiles says,

“Yeah. Protect them. I can do that.”

And when Derek looks down at Stiles he sees the boy’s eyes have gone a bit dark, and when a tremor passes Derek’s frame, he wonders if he’s made a mistake by saying that.

 

~

 

That Danny kid is dead a few days later. 

Derek knows because he’s talking to Jackson when the kid’s body shoots ram-rod straight in the middle of their conversation, looking for all intents and purposes like he’s been electrocuted.

“Danny,” Jackson breathes.

With wide eyes and slow nodding, Derek carefully, “Yes…Danny...” because that’s who they had just been talking about.

 The boy had begun to get suspicious – angry that Jackson kept hiding things from him. Jackson didn’t want to keep lying to him – the boy was his best friend after all. They were discussing whether or not to bring him into the pack when Jackson got that stricken look on his face.

“No,” he croaked, “Danny is in trouble. I can feel it,” and with that Jackson began to run to where he felt the boy. Derek rushed to follow behind the frantic Jackson, all the way to Beacon Hills High School. It had been emptied for the night and the upcoming weekend, but when they get there, a metallic scent hits their noses. There’s also the scent of water and salt – tears and sweat, the scent of fear permeating the air.

Jackson is sobbing even before they hit the locker room – where Derek knows the smell is coming from. The sight that meets them when they do finally arrive is enough to make Derek’s stomach churn with nausea.

Danny is laid out on the floor in the middle of the room. His upper body was split open in a way that mimicked the thoracoabdominal incision – kidneys and spleen and everything else exposed to the cold air. The boy’s legs were a broken mess, as were his arms; twisted with bones bursting through the skin in a way that should never be. Half the boy’s face was missing; skin worn down to the very bone, bottom lip completely ( _chewed?_ Dear God.) off, and a part of the skull was clearly caved in, as if someone took a bat to it. A part of his throat was left gaping, as if a monster had lunged forward and bit a chunk off.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was a hole where Danny’s heart was supposed to be.

Jackson falls to his knees, choking in his tears, unintelligible words of horror plummeting out of his mouth. Derek starts when Jackson jumps up in a rage and moves to charge forward.

“You bastard!” he snarls, and Derek holds Jackson from charging at the nothingness.

“Jackson, what,” he begins to ask, but then he sees who Jackson is talking to.

With a mangled heart in his hands, stands Stiles, backed up into a shadowy corner of the wall. The boy is breathing hard, chest heaving, and his eyes are wet and manic. Derek watches as the boy’s bloody lips tremble, watches the way his eyes never leave the unmoving corpse in the room. The boy looks stunned. _Scared_.

The sight of Stiles makes Derek feel like he’s submerged in a bucket of ice. He would say the thing happening in his chest right now was a heart attack if he didn’t know any better. He can’t seem to wrap his head around any of this, but he holds Jackson tighter.

It takes Jackson jostling and screaming violently against Derek’s hold for Stiles to finally snap his attention to them.

“You killed him!” Jackson spits, “you fucking–”

“I had to,” Stiles speaks lowly, voice barely audible and very hollow.

“Bullshit Stilinski! He didn’t deserve,” Jackson can’t finish the sentence through his sob.

“He was angry,” Stiles whispered, “He was scared. He knew, Jackson. He knew about you and he could have told everyone. I had to protect you.”

“He didn’t know _anything_ ,” Jackson shouts, “And so what if he did?

”He could have killed you all,” and now Stiles’ breath is becoming even more harsh, his voice a crescendo of volume, “He could have went to the hunters. He was a threat to the pack.”

“Stiles, he wasn’t –” Derek tried to inject, but Stiles interrupted him.

“He was!” Stiles looked at Jackson, eyes wide and pleading, then to Derek, “That’s what happened with Kate, right? She found out what you were, used you to get to everybody.” 

The alpha blanches, because he never told Stiles that. Never told _anyone_ that.  He shouldn’t have known – couldn’t have – but apparently he did.

“I’m going to rip you to shreds,” Jackson promises, his voice and body weak from emotion.

Stiles’ face goes violently dark. He crushes the heart in his hand and licks away the blood.

“I saved you,” he says savagely, and in seconds he darts into the shadows, disappearing into the night.

Jackson falls down to his knees again, and Derek goes with him, never letting him go.

“We have to kill him, Derek.”

“Whatever happened to fixing him?” Derek asks humorlessly.

“There’s no fixing that,” Jackson grits, eyes glued to his mangled friend.

Derek squeezes Jackson’s shoulders, “I’ll get Argent to help us deal with Stiles.”

_You say “deal” like you’re not thinking of killing me. Again._

He closes his eyes and opens them again, once, twice, and the third time he squeezes them shut.

He really doesn’t want to.

 

~

 

“A Dybbuk.”

Derek takes in the state of the weary Argent. The man looks worn, his hair has gone slightly grayer, his face more wrinkled. His eyes have a permanent sadness in them.

Derek still doesn’t know what the fuck he just said though.

“A what?”

“Stiles is possessed by a Dybukk,” Argent sighs, “At least, that’s what best matches your description in this journal.”

Derek blinks. The “Winchester’s Journal,” Argent had called it. Derek’s never heard of it.

“It’s a malicious spirit that possess the recently dead , usually to handle unfinished business that coincides with their unfinished business.”

“Stiles said he wasn’t possessed anymore, though, right?” Scott pipes up. He fought damn hard to be included in this meeting once he found out about it. He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d do anything to keep from losing Stiles again.

“He was obviously lying, Scott,” Derek bared his teeth.

“How can you know for sure? He has no heartbeat, Derek,” and that was Allison, sticking to Scott’s side. She’d worried about Stiles’ safety as well. Neither of them seem to know that this is for Stiles’ own good and it frustrates the hell out of the alpha.

Derek opens his mouth to argue back but Deaton – who was brought in by Scott – had stepped in.

“He might have told the truth, Derek.”

“The Vet’s right. The Dybbuk is said to have supposed to leave its host once their goal is finished. Stiles said he wanted to come back and help you guys with the hunters and omega’s right?”

“To protect us. Kill them before they wiped us out,” Derek says.

“Exactly. So he should have dropped dead the moment the battle was over.”

Scott inhales sharply, his expression tragic.

“But he didn’t,” Derek says, partly to get the look of the kid’s face.

“You did say he was given the bite in purgatory. Perhaps it trapped the Dybbuk’s essence in along with healing the body,” Deaton supplies.

Derek scrunches his face, “Stiles said he wasn’t a werewolf. He doesn’t smell like one either. Not even a dead one.”

“Stiles surely doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. And there is also the factor of the Dybbuk to consider.”

“Sounds good to me,” Argent says.

Both Derek and Scott snarl, “ _Good?_ ”

Argent lets out another worn-out sigh, “You know what I meant,” then waits a beat before saying, “A human, especially Stiles, never belonged in a place like purgatory. It’s no wonder he went insane.”

Derek sees Scott flinch at the word. However accurate Argent is, Scott will always love Stiles. Even in this state. Derek knows the feeling somewhat.

“We can still help him, though…right?” Scott asks, voice hushed.

The three older men throw a pitying glance at the boy. Allison lays her hands upon Scott’s and squeezes.

“I’ll have to go to the Sheriff. It’s time he was filled in on all of this,” he drags a hand down his face, “Maybe he’ll even get Stiles to snap out of it.”

“Good idea. He is a righteous man, after all,” Deaton says.

Derek nods in agreement, “In the meantime, we’ll track Stiles down. With force if necessary.”

That earns him a glare from Scott.

_Oh well, what’s fucking new?_

 

~

 

They weren’t meant to be seen.

The pack had finally spotted Stiles. It was Isaac who’d found him first actually, while checking by the Hale House. He figured Stiles would haunt familiar grounds that were associated with the pack and away from the general public. Derek gives him a gentle neck squeeze in approval, silently orders the rest of them to sneak around him. They were going to grab him, tie him up, and take him to Deaton’s to try to find a way to break him out of his dybbuk-induced insanity. The Vet had said something about a ram’s horn or something. Derek didn’t care, just as long as they got Stiles back. Or if they couldn’t, then put him down – because Derek knows the normal Stiles wouldn’t have wanted to be this way.

But of course, Stiles saw them before they had even gotten close. Their plan went to shit really fast.

_Of course it did. I didn’t come up with the plan._

Derek didn’t bother to argue or point out that a lot of Stiles’ plans were horrible too. He didn’t exactly want the voice to go away. He’ll miss it.

_I’ll miss you too, Mr. McBroody._

It’s the glint off Allison’s crossbow that gives them away. Somehow Stiles caught a glimpse of it, and when he did he went _berserk_.

“You guys are hunting me?” he asks, and he sounds so betrayed, “After all I’ve done for you? After everything I’ve given?”

“You killed Danny, Stiles,” Jackson spits, “Are we supposed to be grateful for that too?”

“I did that for you,” he croaks.

He’s died for them, killed for them, _sacrificed his humanity for them_ , and this is how they repay him?

He’s shaking in anger and grief and confusion.

“You,” he turns wild eyes to Allison, “You did this. You’re a _hunter_. You’re trying to get rid of me so you can kill the rest of them aren’t you?”

His words are harsh and he’s rushing forward to strangle her – but he ends up grabbing Scott, who flung himself between them, instead. They wrestle down to the floor, pulling punches so as to not cause any real damage to one another.

“Why are you protecting her? Can’t you see she’s just another Kate?” Stiles growls out.

Scott punches him in the face after that one, “You need to snap out of it, Stiles! Let us help you,” he says, voice cracking in the last sentence.

“I’m just doing what’s right,” Stiles spits out blood off to the side, moving to elbow Scott off from on top of him.

“You’re just a murderer! We don’t need your protection” Scott snaps, emotions running way too high.

Stiles’ eyes go black with odium, and he flings Scott off of him He moves to straddle Scott and chokes him. The rest of the pack try to move in to get Stiles off of his friend, but they can’t move. There’s a pressure on them, holding them back no matter how hard they fought against it.

Derek lets out a roar, “Let him go!”

“You want to kill me,” Stiles says haggardly, not seeming to hear Derek at all. There are tears in the dead boy’s eyes, and he pulls out a knife from his blood stained hoodie. “I won’t let you, Scott. I’ll still protect you though, even if it takes killing you to do it.”

Allison screams at him, “Stiles, that doesn’t make any sense!”

Then Boyd, “Think about what you’re doing!”

The cries fall on deaf ears, though, as Stiles raises the knife to strike down. But he does stop when another voice cuts through.

“Stiles!”

He snaps his head to see his dad, gun pointing straight at him.

“Drop the knife, son.”

From where Derek was, he could smell the wolfsbane coming from the barrel of the Sheriff’s gun. Argent had filled him in all right, and given him fresh bullets as well.

There’s confusion on the kid’s face, like he doesn’t know what the Sheriff is talking about, before his eyes suddenly pop wide open. Tears fall hard down his cheeks, hitting Scott in the face. Stiles lets go of Scott’s neck as if he’d been burned, and jumped off of him. The hand holding the knife starts to shake.

“Oh my God,” Stiles is hyperventilating as Scott greedily sucks in air.

“Stiles, please, son,” the Sheriff begs, and Derek begs inwardly for Stiles to come back too.

Stiles is shaking with just fear and wretchedness now. He bites his lips, trying to hold back a particularly loud sob.

_What has he done?_

“Dad,” he rasps, “Dad, I’m sorry…I’m _so_ sorry. You have to shoot me.”

The Sheriff shakes his head violently, “No–”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut, nodding vigorously, “You have to kill me. I’m sorry,” he sobs.

The Sheriff just keeps shaking his head no, coming closer but making no move to harm Stiles. But when Allison moves, Stiles’ focus snaps on her. His eyes darken, irrationality eating away at his features. She’s a threat again, and just like that, he moves in with the intent to kill.

The Sheriff wastes no time, delivering a headshot to his only family. The body jerks once and crumples to the floor, blood spreading out beneath it.

Derek’s heart sinks, and he can barely see the Sheriff running towards his son, screaming in agony as he lifts the body into his arms – holding the boy he helped bring to life, only so he could be the one to end it. He squeezes his eyes shut so that he doesn’t have to see Scott crawling up to the Stilinskis, hugging both the dead boy and the grieving father. Their cries were deafening. Derek wished there was a different way this could have ended. A way that they could have kept Stiles.

_He was dead already. What’s dead should stay dead, right Derek?_

All the air leaves Derek’s body then. Because that wasn’t Stiles voice. Not at all. It was feminine and calm and it was Laura he was hearing again. He whimpered; he’d lost Stiles for good now.

_Ssssshh. Just listen. Do you hear that?_

Derek’s ears perk, and he can hear something below the sounds of mourning. A low, nearly muted _thump, thump, thump._ Each thump getting louder as the heartbeat rose. Derek stops breathing.

There’s a twitch of a finger.

A stuttering breath.

The Sheriff and Scott let go of the body and stare down in alarm. They are shaking and pale as they hold their breaths.

“Genim?” the Sheriff croaks.

Golden eyes snap open and there are screams.

Screams of terror – of pure agony.

Screams that don’t ever stop. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is most likely not going to be the end. I can't leave Stiles like that - I can't bring myself to kill him. The next part will probably be of Stiles' time in purgatory with Laura and Peter. Also, I got the idea of the Dybbuk from the actual John Winchester's journal that I got in Barnes and Noble. I obviously made some stuff up to fit the story, however.


End file.
